The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast 245 Luvafoodie CEO Michelle Mazzara

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

Luvafoodie CEO Michelle Mazzara

Hi, I'm Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com. Hey, come in here with another most excellent podcast. We certainly appreciate our audience, the greatest audience in the world for tuning in to the Chris Voss Show podcast. Be sure to refer the show to your friends, neighbors, relatives, family, all that good stuff to get them into the show. And also, wow, on YouTube, we have all the new CES stuff coming out for the CES show 2019. We also have all the products you want to buy that you might want to give to your friends, neighbors, relatives, or maybe for yourself or, you know, tell them to put on your wish list for Christmas coming up here in the holiday season. And of course, it's a great way to,

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find out about great thought leaders that we have on the podcast as well. They can go to iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and iHeartRadio, and we're distributed just about everywhere now when it comes to these days on all the apps. So be sure to check that out. Once again, we always have interesting people, interesting thought leaders, great people that have changed the world or are changing the world in what they're doing today. And one of them that's coming to us is Michelle Mazzara. Welcome to the show, Michelle. How are you?

I'm great. Thank you for having me, Chris. It's my pleasure. Good, good. And I'm sitting here with just a pile of delicious treats and edible stuff from from your company uh tell us uh who you are what you're about and uh what all this great tasty stuff is that's sitting before me sure sure well i'm the owner and ceo and founder and one woman show of love of foodie um i created love of foodie four and a half years ago. And it originally started, Chris,

this is kind of interesting, but it started as a singles foodies website, basically a social website for people who are single and have a passion for food and beverage. And me being single and a foodie, I thought, what a great idea. There wasn't anything out there like that. So that's what it started as four and a half years ago. It's now morphed into a consumable brand that it's no longer a dating website. That went away after about a year. But six months into me creating the brand, I started to decide that the brand itself was kind of cute and the name and I started coming out with products that could be sold at retail basically at grocery stores so I started out with a line of candy first line that was caramel and then I morphed into creating gourmet spice blends and gourmet

chocolates and now we're on amazon.com we're in several grocery stores in the into creating gourmet spice blends and gourmet chocolates. And now we're on Amazon.com. We're in several grocery stores in the Midwest. And my goal and my hope is to take the brand national next year and get it into stores in Las Vegas so you can buy it for yourself. That's awesome. I love how you took and pivoted your brand. You launch one way, you pivot another. A foodie dating site is kind of interesting because it's like Tinder only. You have like chocolate bars on there. You swipe left or swipe right. we had a questionnaire. So you would ask, if you filled it out, you would fill out the questionnaire and there are questions like, what kind of food do you like?

Do you, how many times a week do you go out? Do you like ethnic food? Do you like to cook? Are you a beer drinker? Are you a wine drinker? And then we had algorithms that match people up based on, okay,

I'm a wine drinker. I like Italian food or I like to go out three or four times a week. So that was the premise of the online dating website. And I don't know if you've ever tried any of the dating websites out there, but there wasn't anything like that. So there was kind of a niche. The problem is getting critical mass and competing with the big, big guys of the world.

It just really was not possible to do. It seems like a great idea, though. But I can see some different issues you'd have. Like, I know on dating sites, you know, if people are into certain things, they're like, oh, that's a deal breaker. So I'd probably be on there like, oh, you like white chocolate and almonds? That's a deal breaker. Sorry, we cannot see each other.

You're smoking hot. But I'm sorry. I draw the line at white chocolate no i'm just kidding yes yes yes and you know i know you said you you do you consider yourself a foodie uh yeah if you look at me i probably said never no never said no to a piece of food ever um so i'm proof positive. I'm the living embodiment of. Well, foodies, you know, it's the mission or the, I guess the statement behind Love of Foodie. It's a brand that connects all people together who share a passion for food and beverage.

And that's what foodies do. I mean, we go out, we talk about food, we talk about dishes, we take pictures of our food, we post them on Instagram. And so all of that element of the brand is still there. I mean, I just, just the dating aspect is not there anymore.

It makes great comedy jokes, though. Yeah. I could do a whole thing on that, but then we never get the rest of the show done. So you've sent me, and we're going to be reviewing this, guys, on the show done um so you you've sent me and we're gonna we're gonna be reviewing this guys on the show so if you're listening to this on the uh itunes the google play you're hearing the audio version that's only but if you watch the video on youtube what you're gonna see and we're gonna be posting these pictures on our social media is is a plethora

of products that she sent me this wild assortment of bars chocolates there's even some cat lover spice dog lover spice a letter explain this as we go through there's even milk chocolate on a stick these remind me of the C's candies I used to love as a kid we go for quarter and by my mom would buy the C's candy suckers and and these would look just great. And it's hard to sit here in front of you with all the chocolates and tasty elements you sent me here and not have to eat them all. Well, we'll take a bite of them as we go through the show. So if you're listening on audio, be sure to watch the video version of the show or go

to our website and check it out. So you started the company. You've got it going now. It's's on amazon and this is your real passion um and a lot of it's really spice based yes it's you know fourth quarters is chocolates uh it's first quarter chocolates more seasonal so not a lot of people buy chocolates during the summertime so fourth fourth quarter, I concentrate on chocolates and spices are year round. So I started Chris originally with grilling spices and you what I sent you today is that our top six selling spices. But I want to tell you a little bit about what else I have coming out. And the South Free line Line which is very special and dear to me. Two and a half years ago Chris I had chest pains and I was misdiagnosed.

Heart disease runs in my family and I went to my doctor and I said you know I don't feel good I have I actually kind of created this new I thought I had this new disease and I said it's called demoitis, which means after I did a demo at a store, I'd come home and my chest would really hurt even more. And in reality, I had heart disease, and I didn't know it. And my doctor dismissed me, he said, Oh, you have costochondritis, which I don't know if you know what that is, but it's inflammation of the tissue around the lung. And he said, it'll go away. There's nothing you can do about it. It'll go away. Well, fast forward 10 months later, my chest pain got worse. My shortness of the breath

got worse and I could barely walk. And I went in back to see him and I said, I don't have costochondritis something is seriously wrong with me so he ordered an angiogram with contrast and it found out that I had 80 to 90 blockage in my um main artery oh wow so yeah so then he was sort of interested in you know talking to me and so he said you need to have a stem put in right away and um three weeks later i had a stem put in and in recovery i had a heart attack oh my god and i knew i was having a heart attack because i it was a pain that i'd never felt before i felt like stabbing pain fire etc so i thought to myself there's two things i can do I can feel sorry for myself or I can get involved with the American Heart

Association and I can come out with a cell free line of spices because I was a big salt user and I love salt like most people do and So what I created is I created six sultry spices. And I did not send you these, but if you ever want them, I'd be happy to send them to you. And it's for people who have heart disease or don't want sodium in their diet or people with diabetes. And so this new sultry gift box collection is right now available on Amazon.com. And we also have a kindle version so for 99 cents you can download the self-free cookbook and um also buy the self-free spices but coming out at

the end of next week we'll have the new hard copy the self-free cookbook which will be sold on amazon and also on loveoffoodie.com and what what it does, Chris, is it encompasses the six cell-free spices using the recipe or using these six spice blends in recipes. Because what most people don't know is they don't know how to cook with cell-free spices. They don't know how to make something taste good. Yeah. So that's what I'm really excited about and excited to debut that and share it with your viewers today that we will have really great recipes using the cell-free spices

and they can buy either the Kindle version or a hard copy. That's awesome. You know, spices are so important. Spice is the, what's it called, of life? What's the saying on that? You know, I, years, about two years ago, I went through a weight loss. I'd just gotten sick of myself, and I started becoming vegan, and I lost like 75 pounds in about three months, and I, literally, the trick was trick was like I quit drinking pop I was drinking

a lot of pop at the time um and uh I just became vegan and one of the challenges you have when you become vegan is is your palate is used to you know all sorts of high sugar high food content stuff and so you know the problem I always had with vegan food is it can be a little bland and so what I had to do was learn to spice it up I had to learn to you know add this the stuff that could give it spice and taste but without increasing the fat content or sugar content of it because anything tastes good if you pour a bunch of sugar on it. I know I'm living proof of that and the embodiment. So spices are really important.

And one thing I did was I used a recipe type app and started learning about all the different spices that I could use. And what was interesting is before that, I never really had that much of a spice cabinet. I'm a guy, you know, that's just how I am. Women are really better at spices and flavors of life and these sort of different things. And so, you know, I'm a guy. I'm like, you know, salt and pepper, what do you need? So I started buying all the spices and filling my cabinet with, you know, all the different things that normal people would have.

And, wow, what a difference it made in the quality of food, the taste. And I learned to change my palate from a palate that focused on sugar and high fats to just great, good, healthy food that didn't procure fats and sugar to taste good. And so I learned all these different ways to do it. In fact, I'm getting hungry now thinking about it. It's hard to sit here with all this chocolate. I can smell it. And like not consume it here. it's hard to sit here with all this chocolate. I can smell it. I can smell your spices coming off the spoon. And like not consume it here.

We'd probably not get anything done. I'd just be like, uh-huh, uh-huh. I'd just be sitting here eating all your food you sent me. But spices are amazing. I mean, they can really change your life, and they can add flavors to really good foods like zucchinis and and broccoli and and all that sort of stuff like I still enjoy broccoli this day I'll have a plate of broccoli for breakfast and if you season it properly your mouth will love you and and you won't even want that crap anymore that you eat in fact

when you eat it you'll just be like oh my god what did I do to myself yes I agree with you and you're gonna really love the garlic lovers because that is one that i say you can put on anything but chocolate it's our number one selling spice and if you love vegetables i i mean i'm a big especially because i am watching what i eat because of heart disease i eat a lot of roasted vegetables and so you just take olive oil whatever vegetable put a little garlic levers on it, roast it in your oven and you're good to go.

And it's fabulous. Oh, that's awesome. You know, one thing I love to do is make what they call cauliflower steaks. And you season that with some garlic and stuff. You put that in, you bake it, roast it in the oven. And man, you just cut that.

It's just, if you season stuff stuff right you use the right spices like what you created here you can create just amazing tastes where you're just like this is better than any meal i've ever had in expensive restaurants and uh and then your body wants more of it which is healthy for you you know instead of you know but a lot of people when they think of vegetables they're just like uh broccoli yeah there's no real you know your palate gets really used to that sugar and that fat taste and once you change your life um and spice it up if you will that should be like a shirt spice it up or something something probably don't that trademark right well our ad for the two gift boxes are spice up your holidays with our spices. Make them spicy.

And, of course, holidays is a great time to get all these spices because you're making, you know, you're cooking stuff for the family and getting them into it. So you created this company. You're doing well. You've got a ton of products on the website. It's just amazing all the different stuff you have. You've even got stuff for dogs and cats. Now, you've also got a book from what I understand?

Well, the cookbooks coming out. That's what we talked about the salt free. It's called eat clean be healthy and Stay well cookbook because that's kind of my new tagline for especially So one thing about our spices Chris is a lot of spices have fillers in them which means it's not chemicals so our spices i need to share this with you viewers are all chemical free so there's no caking agent in the spices so if they take up which sometimes the what like the chili lime it has lime juice in it You just take a spoon or a fork and you stir it So it's important to know that when you eat our eat anything with our spices on we call it clean eating Which means no chemicals and non-gmo

There's no fillers. They're all gluten gluten free so that's also really good for you so i just wanted to make note of that and i have a lot of people in my audience that are that gluten uh uh they that will mess them up if they take sure oh wow holy crap so did you make and i have to just tell you this, talking about recipes. So for Thanksgiving, you probably know that a lot of people do sweet potato dishes or yam dishes. And they put that marshmallow junk on it and all that syrup. That's healthy, right? All that marshmallow sugar and stuff.

Right, right. off that all right i did uh i took the jamaican lovers and i mixed it into sweet potatoes and um yams and i mashed it so there's an idea for you take the jamaican lovers and add it into your sweet potatoes oh man you're making me hungry this is the hardest thing i've done in a long time i have all this chocolate food sitting in front of me. Okay, should we move into chocolate? I might sneak off screen here. Yeah, let's walk through everything you sent me here. It just smells so good.

I'm just, the spice smell right now just emanating from your spice boxes are just, they smell really good. In fact, this one's the dog lovers. I just opened it up, and I think screw my dogs. I'm keeping this for myself. Okay, Chris, that's funny you should mention that because I debuted the dog and cat lovers on WCCO-TV in September. And if you go to my YouTube channel and you Google dog and cat lovers, I actually made two human dishes with the dog lovers and the cat lovers the cat lovers I put on salmon it's basically the dog and cat

lovers are self-free spice blood yeah so you can you can in my dad this is kind of funny my dad uses dog lovers when he makes his ribs it smells great I mean I don't know if I'll share with my dogs I mean, it really does. I'm like, I don't know if I'll share it with my dogs. I mean, I love my dogs, but I'm going to try it on the kibble. Right. It's cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, parsley, and basil.

That smells just like magic, man. And really, so should we talk about the dog lovers? Yeah, however you want to walk through all the products you send me, let's do it. Well, since you're smelling it, let me tell you why I created the dog lover spice rub right there. That's my little dog, Lucy. A little Shih Tzu on the cover right there.

That's little Lucy. Last year at this time, she quit eating. She became, started not wanting to eat. Now she's 14 and a half but um in january she had her first seizure january 2018 and the veterinarian that i took her to and you're a dog lover so i already like you and i'm a dog lover too yeah that looks nice um said she oh she has brain cancer there's nothing you can do about about it. And as you probably know by now, I'm a person that comes up with solutions to problems. And I thought, there's no way I'm going to give up on my dog.

I found a new veterinarian, and I started Googling and trying to do research. How do you get a dog to eat? When dogs get old and when cats get old old they get very picky and have digestive issues at times and so i found that these herbs that are in the dog lovers and the cat lovers actually help stimulate their appetite they help with cognitive issues they help with their immune system so they're all um it's i say it's a boost of nutrition to give your dog or cat and lucy started to eat again and and and you know and what's what's really really special to me chris is she's still here she's still alive that's all yeah and she'll be so i know your dogs are

you have followers and a lot of people like you're attached to your dogs. The same with, I call her Lava Foodie Lucy. Lava Foodie Lucy. That's awesome. You got a great mascot dog. Yeah, I did. Your Chris Voss show mascot. The problem is I got so many Huskies that it's hard to pick one, but that's awesome.

And that's awesome you're able to find a way to get your dog to eat that's the hardest thing to do when they have cancer is get them to eat well you know like i was misdiagnosed we think lucy was misdiagnosed because my new veterinarian um i'll just shout her out if anyone's watching in minnesota i found the best veterinarian terry scadron a Dr. Skadron Animal Hospital. We started doing laser on her and acupuncture, which I highly recommend if you've got an aging dog. It really helps stimulate their appetite too. So a combination of treatment, dog lovers, and got her to eat again. She went from 13 pounds to almost 18 pounds.

Yeah. It's really tough when they get cancer. In fact, we went through, and I think you said there's turmeric in here, right? Turmeric, yes, there is. The turmeric is really good if they have cancer or if they're having issues. Turmeric helps reduce swelling. So what that will do is help the reduction of swelling, and that, of course, helps pain.

You probably don't know this story, but my prior dog, Abby, we had for about 14, 15 years, she came down with anal sac cancer. And she quit eating, which a lot of dogs do. And so the vet was like, well, she stopped eating. This is what the dogs do. They stop eating. They go off in the wild. They would go off and do like a little den or something and stop eating and pass away.

That's how they resolved the issue. And so he gave me three days to spend with her and said, you know, take her home, spend three days, take a lot of pictures, spend a lot of time, come back, and we'll finish the work. And so I went home and started researching about cancer and cancer with dogs and found that diet is a huge element with them. I found, you know, that one of the problems with dogs and cancer is, or animals cancer, is that cancer attacks the liver and kidneys. That's what kills them. Cancer doesn't kill dogs. The shutting down of their vital organs is what kills them. So what cancer does is it increases the calcium in their blood by attacking the pituitary glands. And the calcium increases in their blood. You see them start drinking water like a fish.

And that high calcium content kills their liver and kidneys, and that's what kills the animal. So getting them to eat is really important. But a lot of times they don't want to eat because sometimes the food that you're giving them has a lot of high sugar content, especially kibble. And so we switched her to a raw diet, all meat diet. And then we started putting in her food, turmeric, turmeric, um, and, uh, a few other different elements, milk thistle to help save the kidneys and livers and get them to recover.

And, uh, I think there was one other thing we put in, dandelion flower. And we got Abby, we saved Abby from a three-day death sentence to a year and a half with her cancer. Wow. That's so great. Yeah.

And she started eating and stuff. And a lot of people, I counsel people on dog cancer and everything because people come to me about it and refer me to it, a lot of times the dogs just don't want to eat that kibble anymore. There's either a high content of sugar or maybe it's taste. And so what you've done is pretty awesome because changing that taste for the dog and making them want to eat,

because that's what the cancer is doing. It's trying to get them to stop eating so that they'll die. It's a really kind of suicidal organism when you think about it but this is awesome yeah the other thing is if you couldn't if you couldn't bake i mean and i have a recipe on the website for dog lovers biscuits basically you take the dog lover spice and you um take peanut, flour, nonfat milk. And that's basically the recipe. And dogs that even don't like the dog lovers, although most do like it, they love the biscuit. So if somebody buys this and they say, oh, the dog didn't like it, try making the biscuit.

It's a simple biscuit recipe. And I encourage you to try making the biscuits too. You don't have to shape them in a bone, just a basic little cookie. You know what this might be good on too? What I've made is I've made my dogs, because I start cooking for my dogs too after this, but I've made my dogs these potatoes. What do they call it? The red potatoes, the yams?

New potatoes? Oh, okay. I made them little sweet potato wedgies where I bake them. This might be really good to spread on those. Oh, okay. I made them little sweet potato wedgies where I bake them. This might be really good to spread on those. Oh, yeah. It would be very good on sweet potatoes because that's what I did for Thanksgiving. I got to tell you, this smells

so good. I could set it out as potpourri and just let the house go with it. It's very kind of Christmas-y too. Chris, taste it with your finger if you want it it's I think what you're being really attracted to is the cinnamon and the ginger oh wow it's tasty as hell yeah you can sell this as potpourri, man. I love the smell like this during the holidays, at the very least. Now, the cat lover's one smells kind of catnippy.

Yeah, there's a little catnip in it. Cats also get very finicky, and they have some of the same digestive issues. And catnip is basically a natural herb that cats really like, but you don't want to give them too much because it can kind of make them go crazy it's kind of like a drug to them so we just put 10 in there and that has parsley basil um dill and catnip so dogs and cats have different you know um they can't all have the same kind of herbs. So the catnip is really good, too. There's a cat recipe on my website also for a cat treat.

So it's a basic recipe that cats like. Yep. And, again, these are all natural. You don't want to give your dog anything with sugar or salt. So these are basically salt-freefree sugar-free spices to mix into if you if you give your dog or cat wet food it's easier because um the herb gets moistened into the wet food but if you give them kibbles what i say is moisten the kibble with a little water so the spice blend will stick and not fall to the bottom of the bowl. So it's very easy.

And I encourage people, this is a new category, the wellness category and the pet category. And this has never been done before, Chris. There's no other spice blend for dogs or cats. I'm the first to create something. This is awesome. And I encourage people to cook for their dogs. I mean, if you can't just cook totally for your dogs all the time at least you

know spice it up make them some chicken and I'm this is probably really good on chicken and I like how you even give some measuring spoons there's a measure thing that comes with makers because I have those customized makers because there was no tablespoon set out there that had one-eighth of a teaspoon or one-sixteenth. So if you have a small dog or a cat, like if your cat or dog is

one-sixteenth, you want to give them one-sixteenth of a teaspoon. So that's half of one-eighth. So these are customized made and these are also available the whole line dog and cat lovers you can buy it on amazon or on love of foodie this is awesome this is awesome and you know nowadays with so many so many of these you've had dogs dying with some of these chinese things you don't know and more and more people are really

concerned about what their dogs are eating and health and one thing i found in my cancer research for my dog is a lot of the food that we're giving our animals is is really chemicalized you know dead protein uh you know you can watch a lot of movies and horror stuff and so i love that you guys have this great food blends that can really help animals and help people that want to cook for their animals or at least maybe cook treats for their animals and get it spiced up for them so they'll eat it. Because I do remember how finicky my older dog, in fact, a couple of my older dogs, they got real finicky at the end where they were just like, you know, they just were getting sick of food. And sometimes you had to spice things up to make it fun for them. Right. They're kind of like us.

They need some spice in life. That's right. Just like old people get, you know, picky when they get old and they don't want to eat as much or, you know, you have to change it up. And so, you know, as dog lovers and as pet owners and she's my baby i don't have children um i'll do anything for her yeah she's not suffering and she's never been you know i have a like i said a wonderful vet i'm very conscientious to make sure that she's never in pain she's never been in pain and uh she's happy and that that leads me into my next item. Can we talk about miracles?

Okay. So, like I said, this ties into Lucy and being still with me. I feel very lucky, Chris, that she's still with me because, like I said, the old veterinarian wanted me to put her down. And I wasn't going to do that. And so, you know, we think about Christmas. We think about Christmas miracles. We think about having hope and just faith. And that's really also about who I am and love of foodie. So this holiday season, I wanted to do something special with my holiday card

because I honestly didn't think that I would have a holiday card with Lucy this year. So the holiday card is a picture of Lucy and I, and we're looking up, and it almost looks like we're going into the gates of heaven. It's kind of cute. But then I created this new, and maybe you can open it up and show the viewers. So we've got one right here. It's the purple one. You're tantalizing me.

Yeah, I want you to try it. Okay. Can you open it and show the embossed front of the box? It's dark chocolate. Yep yep i love dark chocolate too by the way it's 60 cocoa and it's belgian chocolate so it's very high quality doesn't have yep even says the name right on it may be touched by miracles and that's really what we all that's one of the things that i want people to feel when they try any of my products. That, you know, that there is hope and, you know, to have faith and, you know, believe in miracles.

Because that's really what it's all about. This is really tasty. This tastes really good. Thank you. I'm having to use a lot of self-control not to eat everything that's sitting before me right now. Well, it is chocolate season, so you're trying our dark chocolate Belgian Believe in Miracles bar. We also have the Santa Snowman bar, which is also a dark chocolate. That's really good.

People try our chocolates, Chris, and they want more and more. I think I need to do a cooking show podcast, but I'll probably weigh like 500 pounds when I'm done. You want to show the snowflake cookie? Let's see. I've got these

here. Looks like it's cookie and chocolate on one side. Cookie on the other. So which one do you want me to open? Why don't you open the one that you can see the snowflake? Well, do you like mint? I love mint.

I'm a big fan. I think I sent you in the wrappered one. I think it's a dark chocolate peppermint. Yeah, we've got two of them. We've got one that I can't tell what it is. The other one definitely has a mint on the back of it. Okay, try the peppermint. That's brand new this year.

If you're listening to the show on audio right now, you're really missing out on seeing some tasty, delightful stuff. And, Chris, the cookies are on loveoffoodie.com. The chocolate bars in the new Believe in Touched by Miracle is on Amazon. Yeah. So that's an ounce of chocolate on a shortbread sugar cookie. And we're in close-ups of all this food, guys. So if you're listening on audio on iTunes or Google Play,

go watch the YouTube channel so you can see that. And just the other thing I want to say about my chocolates and my cookies is that we can do customized cookies in customized chocolate bars. So let's say you wanted your own chocolate bar or your own cookie. We can take your logo or any logo you give us and put it on the you wanted your own chocolate bar or your own cookie we can take your logo or any logo you give us and put it on the cookie or on a chocolate bar wow so i my actually was a super bowl vendor um and we and now i'm hoping to be a final four vendor because the final four is coming to march it's coming to the Twin Cities in March. And I'm hoping to do some cookies with US Bank Stadium that have the

basketball right on the cookie. This is the hardest podcast I've ever done. I just want to eat. I'm going to use a horrible radio airtime because I'm like munching away. I really like this cookie thing. This cookie is great.

Yeah. The cookie seems to be everybody's favorite. And, I mean, once you start eating those cookies, you kind of get addicted to them. Mm-hmm. You know, they're really very, very good. That's kind of my fear right now is that you're going to create a cookie monster out of me. Well, that's not the worst thing in the world. You know, you can have a – I try to limit myself to one cookie a day,

and I take the cookie and I'll have, like, little bites of it so I don't consume it all at once. That's got to be hard to do with all the stuff you do around the office and home to prepare all this stuff. You can't see this right now, but my puppy right now is just so enthralled with what I have up here. She's like, give me some of that.

Give me some of that. You can't have chocolate. Yeah, no, she can't. Dogs cannot have chocolate. No chocolate for dogs. But later she'll get some dog lovers. And I do want to know, you've got my email. I do want to know how they like it.

She is licking the spice blend off my finger. Is she really? I'm just putting my finger and putting it down, and she's licking it off my finger. She really likes it. Oh, good. Do you have any friends that have cats? Yeah, I do.

In fact, I have a friend. He loves his cat. So you'll have to give the cat lovers to your cat friend. Yeah, she's eating this spice. Just plain old spice. Is that really good? Well, we do have on the dog and cat lovers tab on Love of

Foodie and also on YouTube, we have a lot of people that have done videos with their dogs. So if you are using our dog and cat lover spice blend, I welcome a video of you sharing that. We'll do one on social media. We'll do one with her eating the thing. She's just munching away. I spilled

some on my leg here and she's munching away. So we've got suckers and we've got some... That's actually a hot chocolate on a stick. Yeah, this is... I've been really interested in seeing this. You sent me hot chocolate on a stick.

There's another one here that's a darker chocolate. Dark chocolate, hot chocolate on a stick. So's another one here that's a darker chocolate. Dark chocolate, hot chocolate on a stick. So there's light and dark. And let's give these a taste because I love hot cocoa and chocolate, especially right now where it's gotten cold. Are you drinking coffee right now? I was back coffee. I just refilled some water. Oh, okay. Will you put these in? Yes.

That's an ounce of Belgian chocolate. You stir that in hot milk, and it melts. Oh, my God. And there's your hot chocolate. So you don't stir it like a sucker? You can't, I suppose. No, no, no. No, you stir it in hot milk or hot coffee if you want a flavored coffee.

Exactly. Stir it. And kids love it because there's the play factor you know they watch it melt and then once it starts to melt then you can lick it like a sucker but right now it's you don't want to bite it you might hurt your teeth it's just so tempting i can't resist well um you wouldn't be the first to do it man that tastes really good i would have to say you a producer did that on one of the tv shows i'll save this i'll save this for you know doing the coffee thing because as soon

as you get up the show i'm going to do that that tastes really good belgian chocolate yeah the milk so there's four flavors there's dark chocolate dark chocolate peppermint milk chocolate and milk chocolate caramel and those are on lava a foodie website okay here's the milk here's the milk chocolate caramel latte and wow so you just put these in yeah your chocolate or your hot milk and they they melt down yeah that's uh that's what it says right on the sticker right you're sure in a mug of hot milk or hot cock. You know, I'm glad I had you on the show to tell me this because I would have sucked on them like a sea sucker.

I would have, I'm like, what, you put them in a thing? Is that peppermint I see? Dark chocolate peppermint. That's really good. Oh, man. Really, really good. They're all good. I mean, you know, our quality of our products Chris are really high

and and that's because I wouldn't put anything in my mouth that I didn't think was of high quality so I that's what I created high quality spices high quality chocolate and high quality spice blends for dogs and cats well that's good it's important if you're gonna put tasty stuff in your mouth. You sent me a lot of these bars. These tasty bars. We've got Believe in the Season. These are great holiday gifts.

If you're looking for something to give away to your family, friends, people you care about, people you want to send gifts to across the mail and i'm sure you can you can you know i can go on your website order these up ship them to the people that i love and care about and uh that are people that i want to make uh you know have have sugar well and you know what at this time of the year there are some people that have everything and

they're like what do you buy them what do you buy them you know some people just go buy whatever they want well everybody loves most people love to get something to eat right so i mean this is a new brand love of foodie um is a brand i mean this is a unique gift. So because we're not national yet, it's kind of a unique gift offering because you won't see it in every store out there. So that's the other kind of neat thing about giving our spices or chocolates this holiday season. You're giving something unique. It's awesome. And spicy, too. It's so unique.

You can even, you know, if you know somebody who loves dogs you can send them that the chocolate is excellent i love the concept of this this uh thing i you know i gave up pop to uh get healthier and live healthier and so i drink a lot of coffee coffee's a big thing for me um so uh these hot chocolates on a stick are just awesome. Yes. You'll really enjoy those. And, uh, you know, um, our chocolates have no artificial ingredients in them either. So, and I'm not, a lot of American chocolates that you go buy at the, I'm not going to name names, but they have a lot of fillers in or they have a lot of artificial ingredients ours do not well and all of this all of the dark chocolate is 60 cocoa and the reason it's 60

is in order to be heart healthy you have to have at least 60 cocoa so talking to the heart disease um i wanted a high quality dark chocolate bar because there is just like drinking red wine in moderation and dark chocolate. Those are there's health benefits to people with heart disease. Yeah. And there's been studies that show that some of this stuff is good for you. I mean, a lot of cocoa or however you pronounce it is in coffee.

And there's a lot of reasons. This is a staple of life for, you know, the history of man, as it were. You've got a few other gift boxes here, white chocolate, peppermint bark. And then we've got another gift box, I think of spices you want to take a look at. So do you want to, I've got a little box here that says happy holidays. Yeah, that's not online this year.

That I just sent to you. That's a dual. Yeah, that's, I this year. That I just sent to you. That's a dual. Yeah, that's my favorite. Happy holidays. The white chocolate snowflake, the peppermint, that's online. You can show that. White chocolate peppermint box. Look at this thing.

This thing feels heavy, too. Yeah, that's a lot of. And if you open it up, Chris, you can open it up if you want. It's actually embossed. It says, sweet and sweetie. All of my chocolates are embossed. That's embossed too. And then flip it over on the back. You'll see it's candy cane. Christ, this thing is huge. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Look at that. Oh, my God. Wow. You have to have a party to go to.

Look at all that peppermint bark. Oh, wow. Look at all that peppermint bark. Oh wow. Yeah, it's actually, so show the viewers the little circle, the snowflake, the little one. On the front? Yep. Yep, and then the little- Sorry I'm getting you munching away.

Well, you know what you can do with that, Chris? You can take it and break it up and put it in a candy dish bowl and share it with your friends. Oh, man. And it's got the peppermint bark all embedded in there. If you're not watching this on YouTube,

you're really missing out. I encourage everyone who's listening to this on Spotify, Art, and everything, be sure to watch the YouTube video of this. Oh, my God, it's tasty. Or go to her website and check it out. That is awesome. I've never seen that much peppermint bark on something.

Easy as that. Here's a little peppermint bark. You can't see it. It's definitely white chocolate. So bark is a difference in white chocolate. White chocolate is pure. It's not like the waxy tasting. Notice it's not like waxy tasting.

It's chocolate. So I think the other item that I sent you is the round peppermint snowflake, the little round one. These are the foil ones? No. Did I send you a white chocolate one? I'm not sure if we got white chocolate. Here's another one.

It was cookie. Maybe I thought I was. I got some bars. Okay. Maybe I forgot. We have the white chocolate in the snowflake theme with the peppermint. So maybe I just sent you the big box instead. But there's that version of it, too, a smaller version in the snowflake online.

This is so not what you're supposed to do on radio is to eat while you're doing an interview. That's the gift box, yep. And I have to say, Amazon this weekend, they did an ad with the Minnesota. Oh, did you show the Minnesota chocolate bar? I think so. We, yeah, we're showing it,

but you've got a Minnesota. Yeah. That's, that's, I created that Chris around the Superbowl time because love of food. He was a vendor at VIP tailgating. So I wanted a souvenir that people could take home. That wasn't going to cost him,

you know, a ton of money and easy to pack and easy to put in your purse or your wallet. This is awesome. You guys are at the Super Bowl, feeding the Super Bowl folks. The NFL works with minority-only companies,

so because Level Footy is owned 100% by me, it's registered as a diversified business enterprise. That is awesome yes but it's wonderful it tastes as good as minnesota and the vikings thank you chas so um wow i'm gonna might need an insulin shot after this. Just kidding. So you also sent me this Spice Lovers Holiday Collection box that we're showing on the screen right now. You want to open that? It's got garlic lovers, meat lovers, seafood lovers, Jamaican lovers.

I love Jamaican spice. Barbecue lovers and margarita. Oh. You're speaking to me. Let me tell you about that, Chris. barbecue lovers and margarita oh I created that for Cinco de Mayo that is first margarita spice blend out there and it has actually real feel it in it very personal you lot but it's dried so there's no alcohol content where's the important read on these I'm just overwhelmed by just beautiful scents so we've got the margarita spice blend yeah and all the white stuff is um in that

is tequila can i mix them yeah that's really good on fish shrimp and chicken We're good lovers. Great on salmon. Jamaica jerk. I love Jamaica jerk. Yep. I love making things sharp and spicy. Ooh, barbecue lovers. Barbecue is spicy. Yep. This is a great gift set

for someone who cooks and loves spices. This would be a perfect gift set for them for the holidays. Yes, it's a perfect gift set. Garlic Lovers, like I said, is our best seller, so I'm excited for you to try that. My dog keeps licking my pant leg that spilled some of the Dog Lovers seasoning, so she's already a fan. We've got Meat Lovers here.

This looks really good. Garlic Lovers. Let's open the lovers here. This looks really good. Garlic lovers, let's open the garlic lovers, because I love garlic. In fact, I think that's the reason I'm single, is because no one will get near me for my love of garlic. You have to get them to eat when you eat it, and I

use garlic lovers pretty much every night. Yeah, garlic is good for you. It's healthy, too. It is. It garlic is good for you. It's healthy too. It is. It's very good for you. That just smells amazing. What's in this garlic lovers? This is really good. It looks like bits of garlic. Yeah, so there's

what happens, Chris, when you use the garlic lovers or any of the spice blends, the garlic plumps up. So when you cook with it, it gets plumpy and juicy. It has garlic, basil, parsley, black pepper, and a little kosher salt. Wow, I just tasted this. This tastes amazing.

I want to run down and get some chicken and put this on there. These are great. Are you a vegan? What's that? Are you a vegan? I went vegan for a short while, and then I kind of returned. Okay. I used to call it, like, when you go to prison, they call it gay for stay when you go to prison.

So I was kind of like vegan for stay, if you will. Okay. Well, I'm glad you're going to tie down the chicken. That was my joker out of that. Yeah. It's fantastic. Like I said, with the Garlic Lovers Crisp, when I say you can going to try it out. That was my joker out of that. Yeah. It's fantastic. Like I said, with the Garlic Lovers Crisp, when I say you can put it on anything but chocolate. Anything but chocolate, yeah.

Anything but chocolate. It's that good. I like that sort of thing. But, no, it's very tasty. I really like it. I just want to cook things now. But, yeah, I went vegan for a while, about a year, and then I've kind of come back, but I kind of balance it.

I eat, you know, I have a plate of, try and have a salad a day, a broccoli plate a day, and then I eat some of my normal foods. But I try and eat holistic foods, you know, foods that I know what the content is or what we call live foods. You know, you eat foods that are living they're not dead they're not chemically combobulated you know you know ingredients you're like what the hell's the hotels blah blah you know if you eat fresh food and good poultry and good seafood and good meat you you're doing well.

It's the processed foods that you want to stay away from. Yep. Processed foods and fast food. You know, somebody taught me a long time ago the importance of eating right, and I didn't listen to them, obviously, but I mentioned it. And when you go into a store, they purposely do this on purpose when they build stores they put the produce and what they call the live foods on the outside of the store that's close to the entrances because there's a lot of high turnover on those foods because they

go bad very quickly and you know you look at the french they go out and they shop every day for their meal uh and they're they're really healthy even though a lot of their food has sometimes high fat content. But they go out, they shop for their food, they pick it, they get it fresh from their vendors. And when you look at a store, the further you go into a store in distance from the entrances, the more deader the food is. And so usually right in the middle, they have that frozen food section with the ingredients that make you feel like you're probably eating some sort of science experiment. And it's just the dead foods. And so eating more live foods, more vegetables, then, of course, having different ways that you can spunk it up, spice it up,

it really makes a difference because that's really what you're after, is you're after that certain taste or flavor. And these chemical combobulation dead food companies know that. So they're like, we'll just make some fake crap that, you know, but we'll put a little spicy stuff in it to make it taste well and then you'll eat our crap food. And then after you eat it, you're just like, oh, I didn't do that to myself.

Right. I don't eat any processed foods and no frozen food. Yeah. No one eats McDonald's because it's nutritious. You do it because you like that special little taste of the special sauce or whatever but then you hate yourself for two hours after when your body is just going

why screw you what did you do to me and then you're still hungry because that food isn't even nutritious from a basis of giving your body the nutrition it needs so your body is like well that was great you gave me a bunch of garbage food now give me something that

I can use to fuel our body so I love what you're doing here with all these spices and this is a great gift set to take and get people especially these hot chocolates on a stick I've never seen this before I think this is a really neat gift that you could give people and they really appreciate for you it's a great stocking stuffer too yeah the only problem I have with all of it is I like it so much I don't think I'm gonna share with anyone it's all mine no I'll be sharing the I'll be sharing the calories with my cat lover friend I'll probably make a nice little holiday gift for him.

And, of course, I'll be sharing this with my mom. She's a chocolate aphidigiac. Yeah. If there was a chocolate alcohol anonymous, chocolate anonymous, we probably wouldn't have her in it. She's coming to a duo chocolate bar. Yeah, I'll send her everything to sample, partially because if I don't get it to her,

I'll probably eat all this stuff by tonight. So that would be better. Well, you know, a lot of people, when I get, I mean, they now expect to get chocolates from me and spices. And, you know, I can have it any time I want. So I am self-controlled. But I do use the spices every night. The chocolates, the cookies are, I guess, my downfall

because I do like them probably more than the chocolate bars. They are really good. And I love how you've mixed the cookie with the chocolate, and it's just a nice, beautiful, tasty sort of mixture. I'm not going to eat that because every time I eat it, it gums up my tongue, and I can't talk on the radio. I'm glad the samples arrived in time for our show. This is awesome.

This is awesome. So anything else we need to know about what you guys are doing and how to do it, and, of course, how to order this stuff for christmas gifts this holiday season well i would encourage all your viewers and listeners to follow love of foodie on instagram youtube facebook twitter linkedin um whatever i come out with new you're going to see it first on social media so uh the more likes and the followers we have the better it's just like your show I mean I tweeted and you know put it all out there because that's what we're trying to do is grow our brand it's a it's a new brand and my goal Chris is to try to have the brand go national by the end of

next year so I'm looking for adding some investors on next year and maybe a couple of resources, a couple other people to join me since I've been doing this all pretty much by myself for the last four and a half years. Still going on Shark Tank. Shark Tank should have it. I thought about going on Shark Tank and it's still an idea of mine. We'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, I've had at least one friend, I think two, on Shark Tank. And my one friend, even though he turned them all down for their offers and walked away, it ended up being a huge hit for him. But this is a great product. I mean, if you're a retailer out there who has a storefront, retail storefront,

I really recommend getting a hold of these spices and stuff they smell really good and spice is the key to life I mean this is the thing the flavor stuff um you know my biggest problem is I've gotten older is you know you've tasted everything and so one of the great adventures I had with becoming vegan and learning to spice my food properly was being able to make it so that I could taste stuff that I never tasted before. And I'm like, wow, I didn't know squash could be so wonderful if you season it right. Right. And cook it right.

I'm curious for you to try the spice blends. I know you've tried all the chocolates now, but try the spice blends. Let me know what you think. We have recipes under the recipe tab. You know, just be creative. And sometimes, I mean, if you're interested in the cell three spices, I'd be happy to send you some samples of those too. Well, as soon as we get done with this podcast,

I'm actually going to go make one of these chocolate coffee things. I'm probably going to videotape it too. So for those of you who follow me on the social channels, be sure to watch that. But I'll probably be taping that. But yeah, follow Michelle on her website. You can go to her website and you can see her

videos. She's got these videos that she does about this cooking and different things. She's got an Instagram feed, which I'm sure just beautiful food uh stuff that you can take and see and uh you know that's one of the things i follow on instagram i'll probably follow you really soon here um because uh i love good food and and i love this stuff too because it inspires me to cook something at home cook cook something that's healthy, as opposed to, Oh,

let's go down to the corner and eat the local fast, nasty fast food place that, you know, I'm going to hate myself later when my gut's going, why did you eat that burger? Well, I want to see your, your dishes,

your chicken with the garlic lovers on. I want to see your, your meat lovers. I want to see anything you create. Squash, zucchini, broccoli. Broccoli is something I'm always trying to spice up a lot.

I'm really bad sometimes where I use a lot of ranch dressing on my broccoli, but broccoli. I think you might. Do you like seafood too? Seafood is really big with me I love a good salmon

one of my favorite ways to prepare salmon a lot of people haven't heard about and it's great for seasoning like this is dishwasher salmon you ever try that? dishwasher salmon? I know when you first hear it you're like no but you can google this Dishwasher salmon? Dishwasher salmon. I know. When you first hear it, you're like, no, no.

But you can Google this. This was actually on the Food Network. And you take a block of salmon and you wrap it about four times in foil. You really need to seal it up nicely. You put like some spices like what you have here, like marita spice men seafood lovers spice it up maybe put a little bit of lemon oil in there but you use you spice all the way you want it seal it up you wrap it about four times and there's kind of a special way to wrap it so that water can't get into it you put that in your top tray of your

dishwasher you can even wash your dishes and but most people just you know they just wash the thing you run it through a cycle and i swear to god it's the most moist salmon you've ever had in your life i've eaten all sorts of expensive restaurants all my life, all around the world. I've never had salmon taste better or be more moist than dishwasher salmon. And you can use your wonderful spices to spice it up. But I gotta tell you, it's the

most moist salmon you'll ever have. Sometimes you can let it go through the whole dry cycle to steam it. Because that's basically what it's doing. It's steaming inside the dishwasher. Some people's dishwasher may have longer steam cycles so you may have to kind of play with when to pull it out but usually you can do a whole cycle let let it finish the steaming drying cycle and then pull it out and you'll have just just this beautiful rich tasty salmon that's perfectly

steamed and like i say I've never felt it. I've never had better salmon in my life. It's the most weirdest thing. And they did have the Food Network. So if you don't believe me, Google it and use some of Michelle's spices, and you'll thank me, I guarantee it. They even did a show on the Food Channel where they took a pot roast and they basically wrapped it up

with potatoes and seasoning and stuff, and they put it on an engine block of an older car and they drove it to wherever they were going to go eat and visit a friend for 30 minutes, and they let the engine block cook the meat. So, there's all sorts of crazy ways.

That's funny. But you know what? This is the spice of life. You got to try different things. Don't be bored. Yeah. Well, Chris,

I just wanted to say, I really appreciate you having me on your show and meeting you. And I want to thank you for letting me be your guest today. And thank you for coming on and thank you for the wonderful gifts. These are going to make some wonderful gifts for some people. I'm going to share, probably give them a little scrape of spices and I don't know about these things I think I'm keeping these for

myself because I really love coffee and hot chocolate now so I like how the peppermint bark one has got the peppermint bark on it so anyway give us two plugs again once again for your website so if you go looking up? Sure. It's www.luvafoodie.com. So loveoffoodie.com, amazon.com. You can also find all the spices, the dog and cat lover spices, many of the chocolate bars. And hopefully we'll be on more websites

as we continue to grow and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest and LinkedIn. Sounds good. Sounds awesome. Anyway, thanks to my audience for tuning in. I'm going to go eat some of these wonderful blights, make me some beautiful coffee and hopefully I don't die of too much tasty food all at once. But hey, if I'm going to go, this is the best way to go. Thanks to

Michelle for being on the show. We certainly appreciate her. And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Be sure to give us a like. Subscribe to us on YouTube. Hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of what we're doing. Like I said, it's Christmas. So it's the best time to watch the show. We just got some really cool stuff in from CES.

We got like a giant chess board that moves its own pieces. It moves itself. The pieces do. It's crazy. So you're going to see all sorts of cool stuff from CES. Interviews we're doing, podcasts we're doing from CES show 2019. In fact, next week we have the CEO and President, Robert Shapiro, of CES on the show. This is a huge

get. We've been trying to get him for a couple years now and we finally got him early enough to cut out some time because he's super busy. So watch for that on the show. Be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and iHeartRadio and all the other places that chrisvosshow.com is distributed.

Thanks for tuning in, everyone. We certainly appreciate it. We'll see you guys next time.